Mockingbirds
by crackernchinkinc
Summary: The eye of the storm is passing, and even the shadows seem to have eyes. Something dark is creeping over the horizon, but who would have ever thought the darkest evil they would ever face would come in the form of a child? collab fic by Willowfly & Tauni
1. Prologue: Perfect Dark

Mockingbirds

By Tauni and Willowfly

A/N:

So here's another multi-chapter fic from the crackernchinkinc! This is a darkfic (I am Willowfly btw, so whoever knows my stuff shouldn't be surprised). In the authors' notes, I'll talk like this...

_And I, Tauni-the-awesome, shall talk like this (this is how I spoke in We Got This Far, so it shouldn't be too confusing! I hope we entertain you all with our plottings, because we sure have entertained ourselves!_

Ok, so enough from me and miss "awesome" over here... on with the show!

* * *

Prolouge: Perfect Dark

The soft ruffling sounds of paper echoed gently in the small, vacant room. A lean man stood by a dirty cracked window, using the muddled light that filtered through the old plate of glass to look at a neat, crisp pile of clean white papers inside a manila file folder. His hair was short, precisely cut and slicked back slightly, looking almost black beneath the dying light. His face was long and narrow, interrupted by a pencil thin beard and mustache that traveled from the top of his ears, down to his chin where it took a slight detour to his bottom lip, and then back up the other ear, the mustache bridging over the thin lips and connecting to the beard, under his slender, long nose. His eyes that had a strange light about them, striking silver blue, set deep within his skull, the hollow look of the dead behind his thin, expressionless brow and sharp cheek bones. He was clad in a black, formal suit, the expensive materials looking soft and fine even in the dreary room, and the tie that adorned his chest gleamed a steely blue to match his eyes tone to tone. His shoes where a shiny black, not a scuff nor mark to mar their finest leather, speaking volumes to his obsession, obtaining the unobtainable. _Perfection._

The man narrowed his steel eyes for a moment, his mouth curling up in a small sneer and then used a pen he fished out of his pocket to underline something before turning the page and reading the next. Every now and then you would hear the scratching of the pen or the rustling of a turning paper echo through the room but that was all; no breathing, no shuffling of feet or fabric; just pure, deadening silence.

Then a soft knock on the door, three taps, and his head shot up, snapping the folder closed with a simple flourish of his fingers. "What do you want?" He called, turning his body to face the door across the room, the window behind him casting his body into shadows as the light, no matter how weak, radiate from around him. His voice was not deep and did not rumble, yet held an air of commanding authority.

"Sir, Wilkins just came back with more photos." Came a timid voice through the door. The man raised his eyebrows, gently surprised his orderly had returned to him so soon.

_These creatures_, he thought as he turned his eyes back down to the closed manila folder that was stamped "High Priority" in blaring red upon the cover, _are supposed to be rather elusive_.

"Send him in." He ordered smoothly and turned around again to face the window, looking out of its age encrusted panes to the lively city below. The city was on the move, always on the move, always having to be somewhere, be somewhere now, at this moment, no time in-between.

Which is why he hated this city. He hated coming here and smelling its polluted air, watching its scurrying people, feeling its filthy streets and upbeat manner. The very thought sickened him down to the bones.

Sadly, a lot of contracts tracked back to the city, like his bounty thought they could escape here, run away from their problems and hide behind this wrenched city. But, truthfully, it was easier to find them here, easier to track people when cameras were everywhere, easier to kill when killings happened every night. New York City was the easiest place for a hunter to finish the job.

The hunt is more challenging in the wild. In the arctic hunting creatures of fables, creatures of children's darkest nightmares, shadows on the walls, creatures that strike fear in the hearts of the native people, fill their legends with terror. But he has seen them in all their reality, looked into their blazing eyes, felt their breath upon his skin as the death blow was dealt, their blood warm upon his fingers. They were real, and everyday he was reminded by their heads mounted upon his walls, creatures people only saw in the city zoos and rare footage, waiting for his eyes to feast on them.

Another knocking, this time five sharp raps and the door opened without invitation. A skinny little man walked in, head held high on his thin sloping shoulders. In his bony hand he held several pictures, finger prints smeared all over their glossy veneer. Smiling a toothy grin, the filthy, ragged man presented his prize proudly to his employer.

"Caught'em offa Center'n fifth," beamed Wilkins haughtily, his grating, boyish voice brandishing that infamous New York accent in all its blazing glory. As the man looked slowly through the photos, his grey and rotten smile only grew. "'E t'augt 'e could hide in da shadows" he sniggered. "Obviously 'he's nevah heard'a da K-39 shuttahs on the new Dymra camera, sees right throu' d'os shadows an' onto 'im!" He chortled a few times, a sickening animal sound that broke through his nose in a high pitched wheeze.

The man looked up from the pictures and gave Wilkins a sharp look, eyes narrowing and lips tightening slightly. Yes, New Yorkers, what strange and annoying people. Wilkins widened his eyes and shrunk back, his long neck seeming to disappear when his thin shoulders rose, and his nervous giggle snapped from his lungs. With a long suffering sigh the man looked back down at the pictures, glad to have the opportunities to do so in peace and quiet.

"Where was this one taken?" he demanded coldly after a few moments, directing his gaze over to the picture at the top.

"Oh, uh, juss one block 'way on sixth, 'e looked like 'e wanted ta go somewhere but changed 'is mind halfway through!" The boy took a step forward and nodded as if to reassure himself that the information was correct. "'E turned right 'round 'an went back undah ground aftah that."

The rich man hummed as he shuffled through the pictures one last time before nodding and tucked them into the file. His hand then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a crisp white envelope.

"As promised, your payment."

Wilkins' grabbed the envelope with sticky fingers and the man held back a snarl. _Always in a hurry, always._

The boy tore it open greedily and flicked through the sharp green bills before closing it and folding it once, slipping it into one of his huge, grungy pockets. "Well, 's good doin' business wit ya. You got mah numbah if ya need mah services 'gain" he called, turning on his heels and leaving the room.

_Not even a proper goodbye_, the man snorted inwardly, what _have they been teaching these street rats?_ The man rolled his eyes in distaste, the feeling of city smog thick within his lungs and turned back to the window, the sun now fallen to the west without a trace of light to penetrate the air.

A ring, sharp and to the point, came from his pocket and he, as if expecting this ring long before it came, slid the phone smoothly from his pocket and flicked it open with practiced ease. "Yes?"

"_Mr. Watergate, I am assuming you received my package."_

The man looked down to the manila folder before replying, "Yes, I received it an hour ago."

"_And did held all the information you required?"_

"Yes."

"_Good. When do you suspect you will have the specimens contained?"_

"Less than a week. I will call you when everything is ready."

"_I look forward to hearing from you, Watergate."_

"And I you, Bishop."


	2. Chapter 1: Cat’s Cradle

Chapter 1: Cat's Cradle

A shadow in the sewers caught his eyes at first, that flickering tell-tale sign of neon light pouring down through rusty sewer grates, the human world above, that constant pulse of sleepless nights and pounding footsteps, the rushing hoards of traffic, light, sound, noise and noxious things, the smell of exhaust fumes at three in the morning. All of it blended together before his eyes like children's finger paintings in the dark, the colors smearing together into a muddy brown, but beautiful all the while.

Peering up through prison bars into the bustling streets, he could not see the stars behind the sickly orange sky of city nights, the blinding glow of billboards and apartment buildings, that gentle hum of distant music playing behind the screeching tires, blaring car horns, voices, screams, heedless, drunken laughter.

He blinked sleepily, awestruck by its raging, gaudy colors, its shabbiness, its unfamiliar, tainted beauty. Crinkling his nose slightly at the smell of rotting garbage and sewer water, a drunk man's sick on the curbside mingling with the smell of diesel and cooking grease from the Chinese restaurant across the street.

If he had any sense at all, he would envy them, their freedom in that reckless world above, a recklessness he had once believed he possessed, back when freedom only reached into the darkest corners of the sewers, back before he knew so much about the surface world. But no, he wasn't envious, that's not what had drawn him here.

The fact was, he had no idea why he was here, or even how he had gotten there, looking up into the rusty drainage grates like a child in a storefront window, but wanting nothing of what he saw on the other side. And still, he stared, his own reflection cutting across his vision no matter which way he looked. Those bright, curious eyes meeting dark, cold glass ones, just waiting for something behind those panes to change, something he had always been looking for.

It was a part of the city none of them came too often, not since they had been little kids, chasing long shadows in the parched drainage tunnels, mud-caked leaf litter stirring beneath their padding feet, their echoing, innocent giggles singing over ancient brickwork, across garbage-strewn concrete and dried sewer sludge, at rainy times, trickling rivers that flowed wondrous as the Nile. Back then, that was all they ever had. Each other.

He smiled at the ghosts of memory, their silly games, always led by his wild imagination, his young, careless giggles echoing almost uncontrollably down into the yawning shadows, Leo telling him to hush, his lips turned into a frown, but his eyes alight with laughter too. Raph used to laugh a lot back then too. His eyes weren't always hard like they were now. Donny wasn't so serious then either, never made him feel stupid like he does now. They were all just stupid kids then, and looking up into that so familiar part of city, the dancing lights and constant bustle of its people. How could he ever forget?

Lying on their backs in the dirt-caked leaf litter ground and concrete, parched, coated with refuse, they never cared. They used to stare up there for hours, out past that old drainage grate, ­staring at the intangible blue sky, the people caught in their day to day, too busy to notice four pairs of awestruck eyes gawking up at them from the shadows of the sewer tunnels.

_Reaching up to the light, one chubby finger pointing to a man dodging traffic across the street above them, a fine leather briefcase in his hand._

"_That one, he's a rich man" he grinned with a twinkle in his wide blue eyes. "He bought his kid a pony and she named her Carrots and he has one of thoes big fancy boats. That building over there, that's his house, but then he dropped his wallet and some hobo found it and spent it all. Now he's broke, but he still wears the suit."_

That one had even got a giggle out of Raph, his eyes alight with youth and happiness, his little hands pressing over his lips like he was doing something wrong. And still, it made Mikey chuckle to himself in the dark, the sound echoing down into the tunnels like they starved for it, like they could remember its taste, but hungered for it now.

They didn't come here anymore. Well, at least everyone but him. This part of the city was too bright, to busy and well-to-do for petty crimes, for mobsters or for gang bangers, and later on, Foot Ninja. Somehow, it was like they had slowly forgotten.

But it was late, and the streets were strangely quiet now. It had been months since anything of importance happened up above. In those three months, it had taken him that long to realize that the crime, the avenging, all that fighting, it had become who he was for so long, he had forgotten what it had been like before it all had happened, before his first taste of freedom. It all felt like just a dream to him now, like sleepwalking, like ever since the age of nine, he'd just been sleeping, waiting to be remembered again.

Maybe he had never woken up.

Maybe he was still asleep.

Maybe if he could just open his eyes, he would remember what had finally compelled him to come back after all these years. Maybe he would remember what was so fascinating about the surface world.

He loved it, there was no doubt about that, but after all he's seen, after everything his family had gone through, after actually being a small part of it for two years now, it was hard to see it with the same innocent eyes he had so long ago. The human world was harsh, cruel, unforgiving. All the warnings Master Splinter had given them through the years, every last shred of it had been true. But unfortunately enough, that was something he and his brothers had to experience, and learn, for themselves.

For years, he had refused to acknowledge the ugliness, that the surface was not that starched-white world he saw on tv. Raph had found that out early, Leo following close behind. Even Don could feel it now. Mike could see it in his brothers' eyes. But for years, he had held onto the hope long after the light had left them, refusing to ever let it all burn out.

­He wanted to change it, to brush away all that ugliness and turn on the light, make everything happy and perfect and make the world above everything he had ever dreamt it to be as a kid. He wanted to keep the colors from running together, from blending into that sickly brown, that hazy brackish orange.

When he closed his eyes, he could see it, blue skies and star soaked nights, smiling faces, children's rhymes, unbridled laughter.

He wanted so badly to reach into his memories and pull Raph's hands away, to tell him it's okay to laugh, tell Leo that even if someone heard him laughing all those lazy days, nobody would want to hunt them, hurt them, dissect them, because the world just didn't work that way, because evil like that existed only in fairytales and the world above only had all those brilliant colors, happy people, grungy hobos getting rich off some snob's dropped wallet.

That was the world he so desperately wanted to hold on to now. That was the world he was trying to remember, trying to remind his brothers, the world itself, that things like this weren't just myth.

But sometimes, at night, he could feel his grip slipping, falling faster into a nightmare he couldn't convince himself didn't exist.

Those were nights like this, nights where he felt like the sewer air was choking him, poisoning his blood, blackening his lungs. It was nights like this he just had to check on the world to make sure all those colors were still there, to tell himself that it was the same place he had once so boldly dreamed of becoming a part of, that it wasn't all bad.

After all, it had been three months. The Shredder was dead and Karai seems to have given up her hunt for now. Even the Purple Dragons were quieter than usual.

There was no arguing his family was enjoying it. Donny's been shut in his lab, mad scientist-ing even Dr. Frankenstein out of a job. Leo, of course, was stuck being his uptight perfectionist self, using most of his free time for practicing or arguing with Raph, or telling Mike he was rotting his brain out reading so many comic books.

Raph had been bored from the very start. Two weeks in he was already claiming that he was going to lose it if he was stuck underground a second longer. Leo managed to keep him down for another three until he started sneaking off with Casey. But without any major crimes in the city, what they actually _did _late at night was still a mystery.

But after three months, even Leo was on edge. His practicing was becoming more serious than ever, and something definitely was bothering him. Mike could see it in his eyes.

At first, he brushed it off- Leo was just being paranoid again, no big deal. But now, even he could feel something strange gnawing at his bones when darkness fell. It felt like somehow, this wasn't the end he'd wanted to believe. This wasn't the aftermath he'd hoped for, the happy ­ending of his dreams where life went back to normal once again, when he woke up from his quiet dreaming to remind the world how to laugh again. No, whatever he was feeling-what Leo was feeling- sat too heavy in his gut to be anything good. In the night, in his tainted cold-sweat dreams, he could hear the fates' whispers calling him. This was far from over, this wasn't just the end. A new rush was coming, and this was but the eye of the storm.

Mike wasn't the one to think like this, and that's what startled him now. It wasn't like him to just run off at three in the morning for no apparent reason and wander through the drainage tunnels, remembering the way things used to be. It wasn't like him to wrap himself up in the past, or even remember his childhood with such vivid clarity, colors, sensations. But maybe now, because the world was changing, because _he _was changing, because all his life had just reached the final tipping point, teetering on a knife blade's edge, the ghosts wandered back to haunt him now.

When they were kids, when all they ever knew was stagnant air and sewer tunnels, when the light, the freedom, the rush of midnight air was nothing but a dream, they had all the freedom, all the adventure they could have ever hungered for. Back when all they had was echoing, putrid darkness of stark brickwork and spiders' webs, the thick black sludge of runoff and bobbing bits of garbage stolen away by filthy little currents, his mind had given him all the light he needed, made those filthy grey and blackened tunnels a kingdom all his own, a world even better than the surface. Back then, they had all the freedom they could have ever wanted, and all the colors of his dreams.

So why, now, was it not enough? Why now did that familiar darkness suffocate him like it did on nights like this? He wasn't Raph, he didn't need to vent his anger on rooftop ledges and city streets. He had no anger there to vent. He didn't have to bury himself in thought or invention like Don, or with practice and meditation like Leo, or rebel or fight against its currents because he, out of all his brothers, was the most content with the way they lived.

Or so he had been, until now.

No, he was Mikey. He was supposed to be the happy one, the dreamer, the creative thinker. So why was it getting so hard to remember? Why was it so difficult to stay the way he'd always been? Why did it seem like almost every night he caught himself lying awake, eyes tracing the cracks in his bedroom ceiling, his skin crawling like one million tiny insects, buzzing like something was electrifying his bones, making him itch all over until he just couldn't take it anymore.

Why had it been getting harder to dream the way he used to dream, without the red tainted eyes of the Shredder staring back at him from the shadows, all the ghosts of Foot Ninjas he'd ever killed, the dry, humorless laugh of Bishop or Karai in his dreams, his brothers begging for their mercy.

Watching the bustle of the human world, his eyes slowly refocusing from their silken tangles of silent dreaming, the discovery of this new strange world, they caught a place he did not know or ­recognize, a place he no longer envied, a place where a rich man would never lose it all to the hobo that deserved it. Because up there was a world where the rich man kept his money, his pony, his yacht, and whatever he didn't spend, he used to gain power he didn't deserve. Up there, there was no such thing as fair, no such person as Robin Hood. The world was full of Oroku Sakis and fair, good, superheroes, happy endings- they didn't exist. Now he knew exactly what lurked behind those shadows. He knew it all too well.

It was nights like these, thoughts like these, that drew him to remember, begged him to realize and hold on to every innocent little thing he had ever believed, the things he still held so tightly onto.

He never wanted to forget how to laugh, to see the light, the colors, to feel the rush and wind of midnight's breeze, to jump from roof to roof and laugh with glee and reckless abandon like he had always wanted to as a kid staring up into the sky through sewer grates, like the people who were so lucky to have things they never even knew they had.

He still didn't envy them. In his mind, he was still content, happy for these two years of learning, of innocence lost, these three months of quiet reflection, of his own day-to-day, filled now no longer with fighting, surrounded no longer with death, but filled with happier things, with childish bickering, laughter, the bliss of boredom.

Heavily, he sighed and turned his back to the winking freckles of light pouring through the rusted sewer grates. He didn't need those bars anymore. He didn't need these darkened thoughts. He didn't need to lament the past. He didn't need to see only the blackened things. This world, this life, all these glowing lights, the beckon of rooftops, the darkened morning sky, it all belonged to him now.

Maybe he didn't want to be human anymore, but hell, that wouldn't stop him from breathing in the surface, escaping the familiar echoes of the tunnels for just a little while, spread some color back around the world, rediscover all that light, and then return, before his brothers ever even knew he was gone.

* * *

A dark clothed man encloaked in rooftop shadow chewed thoughtfully on his tongue as he peered silently into the quiet street below, waiting for the creatures that seemed like almost fables in the whispered folklore of the city. Tales of creatures attacking people in the night, leaving behind blood stained alley ways to be found by the morning sun, birthing more ledgends to prove their names, more hurried whispers to hum across the city streets and strike electric fear into night.

But these creatures were far from fables, and he knew it. Working for Watergate had taught him to believe.

Watergate had men stationed at those points according to the scattered sightings and quick glimpses of blurred cityscapes in the background of amateur photographs. So each of the squadron sat and waited, like predators lustily stalking prey into the night, always watching, always thirsting with eyes concealed behind their dark glasses, ready to spring their trap and collect their reward.

Watergate wanted details, wanted to get to know every aspect of his prey, his bounty, before claiming it for his own. He demanded to know every detail, every hint or wind of sighting, every time one of those green-skinned cretins would crawl up, like demons from the belly of hell, and slip into the shadows, waiting, watching, studying until that final pounce, the wound tension of the stalker shattering onto the concrete, and they made the kill they all were hungry for.

So far they had deduced that the creatures were nocturnal, only coming up once the warmth of the sun had dipped beyond the horizon and the sky was painted ebony black with the sickly sallow moon to cast dim light upon the pavement, bringing fourth the shadows and the creatures that knew them so well. When stars could not be seen in the murky sky, their weak light smothered out by smog and city lights as they flashed brightly in the cold air, the creatures would cower in the darkness that the missing sun provides, shying away from the city lights and crowds of people, harboring a natural, healthy fear of humans.

Three men happened to be stationed at this manhole, staring down intently with the eyes of the blood-thirsty upon the rooftop buildings, wearing dark trench coats and impenetrable black glasses, faces painted ebony to match the sky of night. They never moved, their shoulders did not rise and fall with each collective breath, pooling only slightly into silver clouds of mist in the biting chill of the air. They forbade their muscles to twitch from the stillness and never broke their hungry stare.

They were trained, some of the best hunters any high paying customer could wish to hire, and Watergate was most certainly high paying. However, for the rookies, doing recon work on animals was something that they were not used too, no matter how human like these animals seemed to appear.

Animals are keen, their senses heightened by raw instinct and nature, tuned and all-knowing, catching their scents on the wind. They had to cling to the shadows, to blend into the night and become the hunters themselves, give way to primal instinct, become blood thirsty to the very core. The night turned them to animals, into predators, stalking their prey.

Silently one man focused the scope that was mounted on the top of his black sniper rifle, twisting the tip with quick, experienced fingers until the manhole was sharp in his focus, like a hungry eagle's eye. Instinct told him his prey was nearing soon. He could feel its heartbeat in the air, smell its blood, craved it. He did it just in time to see the movement, the heavy metal lift and stir as the shadows welcomed in the night air. The harsh, echoing sound of metal scraping against asphalt echoed to the rooftops, into the putrid sky. Upon the roof, dark shadows finally stirred, their lustful breath escaping lips, turning silver in the air, bloodlust making eyes grow wide, their pounding, ready hearts. It was a sound only a predator could know, a lovely sound only a hunter could recognize.

The prey had come. The death bells' toll.

The hunt had finally begun.

* * *

A/N:

Well thus marks the end of chapter one! Gooooo team! I do have to say I'm having a blast so far, and I'm looking forward to writing more! I think Ive effectively infected Tauni with at least a little of my evilness, so my mission is near accomplished ;)

_Me? EVIL!? Hah! I am as friendly and funny as they come, just go and read my story "Falling Into a Mess" for the funny part! What parts did we each write, you say? Well we collectively decided that we are not going to tell you who wrote what because we both kinda wrote it, helped each other and stuff._

_I hoped you all enjoyed it -UNevil laugh- please tell us if you liked it or not, we need to know the readers feelings and thoughts on it! _

Oh, you'll be evil when I'm done with you... proof is in the fic, so stay tuned! Darkness yet to come!


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